You're Under Arrest Vol. #02 (of 13) (Mania.com)

The Review!With the OVA’s out of the way, we move firmly into the actual TV series that started up two years after they finished. Thankfully, there’s few changes to the continuity.

Audio:For our primary viewing session, we listened to this disc in its original language of Japanese. And then promptly rewatched it in English. Both tracks are pretty standard stereo mixes with some good moments of directionality during some key scenes, but otherwise is solid with little standing out. Dialogue is crisp and clean throughout and we noted no dropouts or distortions on either track.

Video:The biggest “shock” that you get is the transition from the higher quality OVA of the first volume to the more standard fare of a TV series with this volume is the changes in the coloring. It’s simply not as vibrant in a lot of areas, particularly fleshtones, as the OVA’s were. But honestly, that’s just to be expected in a transition like this. Barring that, the transfer here is pretty good with solid looking colors with some cross coloration showing up along the edges of characters. Aliasing is pretty minimal and overall the transfer looks good, but just lacks that extra oomph we got from the OVA’s.

Packaging: This is something of an odd packaging in that there’s a lot of material on it. The front cover itself features a nice shot of the two of the men from the series and three of the female leads with a solid looking logo below them. The discs volume is listed here as well as the four episode numbers and titles. The back cover is setup similar to the computer menus in the show and the main menu itself, with a list of the main Japanese production folks as well as the episode numbers, titles and a two line summary for all four episodes on this disc. There’s no real insert as we’re used to, but we do get the translation recipe cards for the OVA and TV series opening and ending songs in both romaji and English.

Menu: The menus are setup in a fashion after the computers available in the girls mini patrol car, which gives it a good feel. Selections are available along the top for language and a play all feature while you can also browse down along the file folders to open each episode. Episode numbers/titles are only shown when you actually move to that folder, so when you initially start up you only see the first episode. This threw me at first and I thought that the disc only had the one episode on it. Also, when selecting an episode from here as opposed to the play all, it only plays that episode and then returns you to the menu when finished, unlike most discs that continue on to the next episode. Access times are nice and fast, though transitions from the main menu to subsequent menus are a touch slow as a piece of animation plays out along the top each time.

Extras: None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)Now we’re into the meat of the series! With the show picking up after the OVA’s, the series gets right down to the business of telling fun episodic stories that help build up our love and affection with these characters, as well as introducing new ones.

We get a new officer right off the bat, as the Captain starts talking about a very well thought of officer whose been transferred to Bokuto. That alone should be a heads up that there’s something wrong with them. What could be wrong with Aoi, the latest arrival? Well, prior to coming to Bokuto, he worked in the anti-chikan task force, which means he was dealing with the growing and growing problem of men who grope and abuse women in trains. Apparently he joined up right out of graduation and has become a rather solid officer.

His main problem is that he’s spent too much time in that task force, and that required him to dress up as a woman. He’s now more of a woman than a man, usually forgetting the simple things and just not realizing how it affects others. So it’s little surprise that he’s now in Bokuto. The whole station gets in an uproar over this, as the women don’t want him in their changing room and the men can’t handle such an attractive woman/man in their changing room. Some compromises are sought after, but the show moves away from those and more to the actual character of Aoi as opposed to the problems he/she causes.

I like the character a lot, since it provides some fun gender comedy to things and provides both sides of the sexes to get confused. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s dead sexy.

From there the show moves into more standard fare as we go through the episodic adventures. A fun if predictable episode deals with a high ranking officer coming to Bokuto while the Captain is out and starts to really grill into them about how lacking they are. You get the usual scramble of the cast trying to put on a good face while trying to hide their various items at work, such as games and toys. The curmudgeonly inspector is the type that loves being able to put the fear of god into underlings and really has a lot to work with here. Of course, there comes the moment when everyone proves themselves, and while it’s pretty simple, it does show how good this group works as a team.

Probably my second favorite episode here after the Aoi introduction deals with Yoriko. Since we haven’t gotten to know her character too much over the course of the episodes, this one does a great job of explaining her academy time as well as the way she simply works. One of her academy classmates ends up coming out to the Bokuto areato try and take Yoriko down a peg. Apparently, when the two were together, Yoriko always managed to outshine and outscore her. And not by skill or actual knowledge, but by sheer luck and apparently stupidity at times. So with her rich parents backing, she has a customized police Porsche and challenges Yoriko to a match to see who makes the most arrests. This was just a really fun episode as it goes perfectly in telling the way, well, most of the people in Bokuto work as opposed to those like Chie.

The episodes here were a lot of fun, very much in the vein of the OVA’s I’d enjoyed years previously. While I do hope for more story arcs in the future, I’m definitely enjoying the single episode stories told here. The characters make this series enjoyable to watch, whether they’re just bantering back and forth or off doing a rescue. I’m glad there’s another forty-four episodes to go!